Procrastination or Preparation?

By Julie Anne Lindsey, on June 24th, 2010

I had a MAJOR thrill yesterday. While perusing (read *stalking*)my daily blog faves, I saw that my secret agent crush was into women’s fiction. Everyday is different, of course, but yesterday she was feeling women’s fiction. Yeehaw! I quickly pulled up my query which I have been ripping on and rebuilding for e v e r, and sent it off with a note…”saw your blog, love your blog, got some WF for you!!” Secret agent crush zips me back a ….”send it over,” and I lose it. Frozen, I don’t want to blow it. I hooked the funnest agent in NYC with a query *pat on my back here* but I was terrified to send it. Then, God intervened as he so often does when I’m in in spazzy mode. A heavy rain because a lightning storm extravaganza and deluge. Then whoo went the wind and out went the lights. Right. I was giddy. I had time to think. It was out of my hands. No power, no web.

When the power was back up I had enough sense to open and reread my entire manuscript. Its been a while since I set it aside and so I saw it with fresh eyes. Who can trust their eyes though, really? So, I sent it over chapter by chapter to the Word Whisperer. I think that I may have caused her brain damage when I called to warn her because the lightning zapped her phone and shocked the crap out of her ear. Can she hear me now? Not sure, but that woman can read.

We were up until after 1am, wrangling loose commas and finding errant misspells, the occasionally missing ‘a’ or ‘the.’ Over all, the manuscript looked great, made me laugh, and it is ready to go to secret agent crush today…as soon as I freak out over the synopsis a little more.

Are my little *read HUGE* attacks really procrastination? Statistically speaking, my rejection is only a click away. Or, am I being prudent? After all, I don’t want to get a quick rejection because I didn’t take my own advice and properly prepare. Well, either way, today is the day and my second full manuscript is headed to its appropriate (hopefully perfect) agent contact.